


Might Go Better Than I Thought

by Kastaka



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-12
Updated: 2013-06-12
Packaged: 2017-12-14 19:07:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/840348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kastaka/pseuds/Kastaka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maria Hill doesn't have time to go to Tony's parties - and she certainly doesn't have time for any romantic entanglements...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Might Go Better Than I Thought

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tielan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/gifts).



"You never come to my parties."

He's still got the faceplate down, but it doesn't take much to extrapolate the wide-eyed look; she's getting pretty good at predicting what he actually looks like under there.

"And you think that petulant tone of voice is going to help?" she asks, rhetorically. "ETA of that medevac, please?" she calls in over the radio. "And no, you can't just go over and pick them up, Captain America reports that Hawkeye might have spinal trauma this time."

"I could carry a medic?" offers Iron Man.

"Or you could sit tight and wait for the helicopter like everyone else," she replies. "It's only a couple of minutes out."

"So you have a couple of minutes to talk about why you never come to my parties," concludes Iron Man triumphantly.

"Not only am I far too busy to come to your parties," replies Maria, "even if I was miraculously free of an evening, I would be washing my hair. Perhaps watching some television. Maybe I would even get an early night."

"That's exactly why you need to come to my parties," insists Iron Man. "A pretty gi... beautiful woman like you, needs to learn how to relax..."

"That is quite enough, consultant," interrupts Maria, emphasising his SHIELD job title in lieu of a rank. "Or do we need to send you on another compulsory sexual harassment prevention course?"

"Woah, easy tiger," replies Iron Man. "Sometimes a compliment's just a compliment, you know? No?"

Fortunately, they are interrupted at this point by the sound of rotor blades; Iron Man exits stage right to avoid the impending debrief, and Maria heads in to the still-smouldering wreckage.

Things have pretty much stopped falling off other things, but the downdraft is threatening to make that start happening again; so Captain America is standing alert over Hawkeye with his shield out, ready to intercept any of the creaking pile of debris that decides to head in their direction.

"Sorry about the property damage, ma'am," he says, as Maria comes into view.

"Yes, well, at least the footage shows it's blatantly their fault this time," she replies, screening her eyes from the dust with one hand while trying to look up at the helicopter. "How are you two?"

"Had worse," contributes Hawkeye cheerily from the ground, where Captain America has improvised a neck brace and spine board from some of the wreckage.

"I'm fine," asserts Captain America, in flagrant disregard of the evidence; the arm which isn't holding the shield seems to be melted to the suit, something has torn a ragged line down his left shoulder-blade, and there's an ugly chunk of shrapnel sticking out of the back of his calf.

"You are both getting in that helicopter," Maria declares firmly, "and the next time I see both of you it had better be in a hospital bed."

Captain America visibly winces as he suppresses the reflex to salute with his injured arm, and just for a moment Maria has the strangest impulse; she wants to rip that stupid mask off his face and kiss the pained expression away.

She shakes her head, surreptitiously, to get it out; and makes a note to ask some of the SHIELD doctors, in confidence, if there are any strange pheromone effects that come with that serum.

"Might have had to get it wheeled in to the Tower," contributes Hawkeye, and it's not clear how much he's joking. "You know what Tony gets like if you miss a party."

At the use of Iron Man's actual name, Maria doesn't quite suppress the urge to look around nervously, which leads to a chuckle from Hawkeye which is quickly cut off as he coughs weakly, then holds really still and waits for the pain to subside.

"You just lie still," Captain America admonishes him. "Look, they're heading down for us already."

The helicopter, holding at a safe distance, is indeed extending a couple of SHIELD medics on some rope towards their location.

"Seriously," says Hawkeye, as he gets his voice back under control, "if anyone doesn't know Iron Man's name, maybe some hermit in a cave somewhere, I'm sure he's headed right off to correct that oversight."

Then the medics are down and checking over them, looking nervously up at Captain America.

"Him as well," Maria reassures them. "And don't let him give you any shit about being fine, either."

Captain America turns his head to look at her, although he otherwise holds still as the medic starts to examine him and strap him into a harness for extraction.

"And you're fine too, I take it?" he asks.

"Not a scratch," replies Maria, with a slightly rueful tone. "Turned up too late for the excitement."

He nods, and looks at her for another moment, as if he wants to say something else; but the medic finishes strapping him in and gives the signal, and they both ascend into the sky.

\----

Maria is conflicted about how she ought to enter the warehouse. On the one hand, this is meant to be straightforward; a little excursion to have a nice chat with an informant, just something to stretch her legs and get her out of the office.

On the other hand, her experience tells her than nothing which is meant to be straightforward ever is.

She could stride in confidently, like she hasn't a care in the world, and that would probably score more points with the interviewee and put them further off balance in case they'd considered being awkward; but there was a fine line between looking unconcerned and being insufficiently alert, and the location was almost comically perfect for an ambush.

And maybe the informant would appreciate her attention to the safety of both of them by being visibly alert and cautious, too.

So, like everything else, she compromises. Not quite gun-in-firing-position, swinging around corners ready to shoot; but definitely eyes out in all directions and hand on the holster, not an immediate threat but hopefully fast enough into action if necessary.

Some natural light is filtering through the line of small, high windows around the edges of the warehouse, so she doesn't bother with a flashlight to give away her position.

Then all the warehouse lights come on at once, just as she is reaching the corner of the first shelving unit, complete with a cacophonous cry of - "Surprise!"

She does not draw her weapon or shoot anyone, because she is well-trained like that, but she does roll her eyes and shake her head in mild disbelief.

The middle of the warehouse has been completely cleared out, and installed in the cavernous space is a two-level bar, a succession of comfy seats and sofas around a massive plasma wall, a square of glowing tiles which light up in various patterns and are presumably some kind of dance floor, several SHIELD agents who really ought to have known better, and the Avengers. 

Including, carefully installed in the ground floor area in front of the bar, two fully-equipped hospital beds.

"Yeah, sorry about the mission parameters," calls Tony Stark, heading in her direction from his station behind the bar. "They were maybe just a little bit completely made up. But hey - now you definitely have time for a party!"

He attempts to hand her a glass of something pink with an umbrella in. She just looks at it, with no attempt to hide the measure of her disdain for such things.

"Oh, uh, there's a lot more where that came from," he says, taking the drink back before the umbrella wilts under the force of her disgust. "I guess you want a real drink, right? What's your poison?"

"Do you really drag them out of the hospital on a regular basis?" she asks, half-following him as he retreats back to the relative safety of the bar.

Hawkeye is strapped right down, but there's some kind of mirrors-and-screens arrangement that lets him watch most of the action, and he grins up at her even though he's too immobilised right now to wave.

Captain America appears to still be unconscious.

"Did you..." she says, pausing by his bed. "Did you actually get his permission?"

"Eh, he's used to it by now," Tony Stark replies, offhandedly. "You like whiskey? With or without an 'e'?"

"I see," says Maria, dangerously. "Agent Simmons! Agent Wise! Agent Blake! This party is over - we are getting Steven Rogers back to his health care facility immediately."

"Hey, hey," says Tony, abandoning the drinks and heading towards Maria as two of the three agents she has called out converge on the bed and start talking into radios, while Blake starts ushering SHIELD personnel out of the area. "It's not like this is the first time... he's normally fine with it... would you rather we'd woken him up early, against medical advice?"

"Don't you start talking about doing things against medical advice," replies Maria. "And, not making things better. Are you in fact admitting to repeatedly kidnapping an important strategic asset?"

"I'd have thought you'd be more upset about the mission hacking," muses Tony. "And who's going to look after Hawkeye here if you break up the party?"

"You can include Agent Barton in the evacuation," Maria contributes in the general direction of Agent Simmons, who nods. "Satisfied?" she asks Tony.

"Well, no, not really," he replies. "I go to all this effort to make your lives better, and what? You show up and act like I've been shooting the heads off adorable puppies for target practice, break up the party - which I put on at considerable personal expense, I might add..."

"Maybe you will think twice about coercing people to attend your little gatherings in the future," Maria warns him.

He tries to continue protesting, but a consignment of medics have arrived and are wheeling away the hospital beds; Maria considers staying and clearing up Tony's party, as well as giving him a proper dressing down, but expects that it will work just as well as it ever does.

And, of course, Steve picks this moment to wake up and look around in extreme bewilderment.

The medics start to reassure him, but it makes Maria's decision easier. "It's all her fault!" is Tony's last contribution before he heads back to the bar in order to revive the remnants of his party.

"What's all your fault?" Steve asks her, blearily, as she keeps pace with his bed.

"Oh, just foiling some light kidnapping," she replies, flippantly. Feeling much more nervous than she ought to over a simple conversation.

"Ugh, has Tony been at it again?" he sighs, subsiding back into his restraints. "I keep telling him not to, but, well, he doesn't think he means any harm by it, and..."

"Want to press charges?" Maria offers him, with a tight smile that she thinks demonstrates that she isn't entirely joking.

Steve shakes his head. "You know I can't, really," he replies. "I don't know, he usually leaves me alone when I'm quite this out of it, at least for a couple of days. Guess I'm no fun when I'm healing."

"Well, I'm glad to hear he doesn't kidnap you in your hospital bed that often."

"No, that's Hawkeye who's the regular attendee in traction," contributes Agent Wise. "I guess he takes longer to heal up, though."

Maria nods very shortly in Claire's direction - a very clear dismissal - as the beds are loaded into separate trucks, and Maria loads herself into Steve's quasi-ambulance without giving it much consideration.

"I really don't mind that much," Steve attempts to protest. "I mean, I'm not saying you shouldn't have rescued me, but..."

"You shouldn't have to put up with that nonsense," Maria reassures him. 

"I know," he says. "But I've got to put up with some of it; I mean, it's probably okay this time, because it's your fault and... sorry, but you don't have to get on with them like I do."

She wants to brush his hair out of his face; to tell him that he really doesn't have to put up with it; to say that they should respect him for his accomplishments, that he shouldn't have to do this high-school social popularity bullshit; but she knows that he's right.

And she knows that while he must be used to people looking by now, she really shouldn't touch.

"It'll be fine," he tries. "I'll be fine. It's not that bad..."

"It's just another example of Tony Stark's complete lack of respect for other human beings," she sighs. "We're going to have to do something about it, sooner or later."

"I'll talk to him," Steve promises.

"You'll do no such thing," replies Maria, with a fierce light dawning in her eyes. "I'll get Pepper to talk to him."

\----

It's a couple of weeks later when Maria finds the card on her desk, buried innocuously between two highly classified reports.

The note almost exactly fits the series of gold-lettered party invitations that Tony Stark has been sending her, each one more exaggeratedly formal than the last, except it has 'P.T.O.' scribbled on it in cheap fountain pen.

Against her better judgement, she turns the invite over.

On the back there is more, in the same quick, careful hand. "I'm sorry but Tony insisted I write this. He says he's very sorry and he promises never to pull anything like that again if you will just show up to this one party. If you don't like it you can leave again. For some reason he thought my handwriting would make you read this. -Steve."

Then her phone rings.

"So, you coming to the party this time?" asks Tony Stark, possibly more anxiously than he meant to.

"You did not just do that," she complains, holding the phone slightly away from her. "We are quite serious about the security of this office, Mr. Stark..."

"Oh, it's nothing like that," Tony attempts to reassure her. "I just got a couple of your secretaries to talk to some other SHIELD agents about your routine, so I knew when you'd be getting down to that layer of your in-tray, and then I got Agent Wise to slip the invite into the two reports she brought over. So, you're coming, right?"

"Against my better judgement," Maria concedes. "You had better keep your end of the deal."

"Cross my heart and hope to be blown up in the wreckage of a supervillain's surfaced mole machine," he replies, glibly. "Oh. Too soon?"

"Did you want to have another conversation about your attitude?" Maria warns him.

"Oh, so that was you," he replies. "You should know that we do that conversation at least once a fortnight anyway, although I've now promised to restrain myself from kidnapping people from hospital without their previously obtained permission, especially when it's your boyfriend."

The ensuing moment of silence lets Tony know that he should be glad that he had not put through a video call, and he quietly disconnects while Maria is still staring at the phone incredulously.

\----

She considers walking precisely two paces inside the door and then walking straight out again, but she expects that would just be taken as an excuse to escalate, rather than enough of a capitulation to put this stupid conflict behind them.

Instead, she resolves to treat it like any of the innumerable 'networking events' that someone in her position is obliged to attend.

As she heads up towards the bar, she sizes up the party much as she would any other gathering of this type; the people propping up the bar, the enthusiastic cluster around the games machines, Clint Barton showing off his recovery by breakdancing on the dance floor, nervous types hovering near the copious buffet... including Captain America, of course.

Or Steve, she guesses; he's off-duty now.

Tony is, of course, behind the bar and enthusiastically awaiting her arrival. She gives him a narrow, obviously plastered-on smile, which she knows will get the message across. 

"A drink," she says. "I'm sure you've spent all day planning which one."

"Would I?" he asks, handing her the whiskey on the rocks that he has been preparing as she approached.

"Yes," she retorts, and with that she moves off towards the buffet, having paid him the socially mandated minimum quantity of attention she could get away with without inviting further trouble.

"Hey," calls Steve, distinctly less sure of himself than she'd heard him sound since fairly early in his re-education.

"Hey," she echoes, adding several levels of genuine to her smile. "Written any good blackmail letters lately?"

She immediately feels kind of bad about bringing it up, as the light of hope in his eyes dims into wounded embarrassment.

"I'm sorry, ma'am," he says, addressing the floor a few inches in front of her. "I shouldn't have done it. You know... no, I'm not going to make excuses."

She loads up her plate to give her a moment to consider her next move.

"Good," she says, "because I don't want this to become a conversation about whether you can control Iron Man or not."

She starts out crisp, but she puts a little amusement into the end of the sentence, hoping that he will pick it up and run with it.

"Me either, ma'am," he replies, and the lightness in his tone and the way he raises his eyes again implies that he did understand her tone.

"So," and she casts around for a safe topic. "Is the food always this impressive?"

"Pretty much," he says, and she watches the momentary pause while he gauges her reaction and decides that he can get away without adding 'Ma'am' with some satisfaction.

On the other hand, he's basically shut the conversation down again, even though he's looking at her like he expects there to be something to follow that. Normally when she's at one of these things, there's some kind of focus - a speaker they've just seen, or a mutual interest in some area, or at least some harmless institutional politics in whatever institution the event is being held under the banner of that she can refer to.

But she's pretty sure that all the institutional politics of SHIELD and the Avengers that she could even talk about was potentially quite harmful.

Which just leaves her picking out standard cliches, and cursing herself for unoriginality.

"So do you come to these things often?" she tries.

"I kind of feel like I have to," he admits. "And, I mean, I can basically stand here and eat good food all evening. It's not that bad. At least no-one's expecting me to do a song and dance number."

Maria takes a sip of her drink. "And here I was hoping that would be your party piece," she smiles.

"Maybe if you ask nicely," he smiles in return.

She shakes her head, slightly disbelievingly. He's just a naturally nice guy, she tells herself. He says that to all the girls.

"I can't believe I even showed up here," she says, to give her expression a cover story. "I should have just told Mr Stark where to put his playground-level attempts at blackmail."

"So, why didn't you?" he asks. And while he looks as innocent as ever, she sternly reminds herself that she is actually dealing with a highly intelligent being - person - whatever. Not just a dumb slab of muscle, anyway. 

She carefully picks the conversational bone she is going to throw him.

"I've developed a habit of just doing the things that I think the Director is going to order me to do anyway," she admits, strategically.

His reaction tells her that 'potentially dangerous frankness' was not the response he was expecting from that question. Good. Off-balance is how she likes her conversational partners. Although it's not quite following Imaginary Nick Fury's briefing. In her head, he tells her that she's here to become a person to these people - because the only thing these Avengers really value is personal relationships, so she had better hurry up and form some with them.

Covering the pause by eating another canape, he recovers quickly.

"What's his angle, then?" he asks. Then quickly adds, as if he's worried he might have pushed it too far, "if you're allowed to tell me, of course."

"I'm afraid my simulation isn't that advanced," Maria demurrs. "Very few people can tell what he's going to do; even I couldn't hazard a guess as to why."

Steve replies with a rueful smile of acknowledgement, and picks up his drink. "I'll drink to that," he says, and does so. "I know it doesn't do anything, but I still kind of like the taste," he explains.

"Whereas us mere mortals need to be a little more careful," Maria says, taking another sip.

She circulates a little, but she notices how conversations tend to change as she approaches, how terrified the poor junior agents in the other seats are when she sits down in the racing simulator next to them to drive a few tracks. When she half-heartedly tells them off for letting her win, she can see on their faces that they really didn't, and it is about the last straw.

As she's heading for the door, she can see that he's still watching her, as much as he's trying to hide it behind his plate of food.

She supposes she's going to have to deal with this now, then.

Subtly changing direction, she makes it look approximately like she has always just been heading to the buffet, while avoiding various people on the way.

She can see by the way he looks up and pays attention that he hasn't been fooled, but hopefully it has kept up appearances.

"Do you always spend the whole party propping up the buffet table?" she asks.

"When I can get away with it," he replies. "Do you always try to sneak out so early?"

"Only when I'm done with the mission."

"And are you?"

"I think I've spent long enough here to humour him."

"I really should have kept him under control for you."

"Well, good luck with that." She's been over here too long; either she needs to take her leave, or she needs to take some more canapes.

She begins to automatically reach for the canapes, but then she sees how he's looking at her, like he's trying to decide something; like he's trying to nerve himself up to say something.

And all of a sudden, this evening has been far too long for that, and she doesn't want to deal with it now after all.

She changes her movement from taking a plate to brushing some crumbs and neatening up the tablecloth, shows him one last professional smile, and heads for the door.

\----

"There must be hostages involved."

"Evidence?" asks Nastasha, not looking up from the phone screen. She is trying to page through some surveillance information while Maria is driving them down a narrow mountain road, because absolutely no-one else is allowed to know what is going on.

"They have nothing to out fight him. So he must have gone willingly."

"He's good, but predictable. Doesn't do so well without backup. Tends to expect someone's watching his back."

"Still, these aren't the sharpest knives in the drawer. That's why it's so embarrassing."

"We still don't know what kind of help they might have had." She scrolls down a little and curses succinctly in Russian. "This footage is useless. When he's back, we are moving him to a better neighbourhood. Or at least installing our own cameras."

"We've got them in the apartment block and the surrounding streets, but you're right, he goes to that cafe a lot," Maria replies. "I think it's been the same cafe since... before, you know."

"Doesn't matter. We were already watching these. This is a terrible day for a picnic." Natasha glances out of the window at the driving rain and occasional flashes of thunder. "Not convinced we're going to reach the top. They're not that stupid. Take the next viewpoint with plenty of hedgerow."

They pull into a parking area just off the road, adorned with a lovely wooden map detailing all of the interesting landscape elements that are hidden behind the grey wall of rain, with little drawings of all of the wildlife which is too sensible to be out in this.

As Natasha opens the door, they subtly slip into character. "I need to go first!" asserts Maria stridently.

"It's your car, do you really want to abandon it here?" replies Natasha hysterically. "Or for me to pee in it? I'll be right back!" 

"I don't want to pee in it either!" insists Maria. "Fuck it, I'm leaving it here for a minute. No-one is going to be out in this."

And thus they make their way into the hedgerow, probably out of direct surveillance.

With one glance at each other, they begin to head purposefully for the hidden entrance that is identified on their extensive map of the survivalists' compound. It's meant to be an escape hatch, but it'll do as an ingress point. Maria watches out for trouble while Natasha sticks a couple of little explosive patches onto the hatch and gets to a safe distance.

No time to lose. They pile into the smoking hole in the ground together. Natasha had offered Maria some of her toys, but Maria had just looked at them dubiously and said she'd probably hurt herself with them more than the enemy. So Natasha takes point, although there's not much to do right now, and Maria jogs along behind her as rearguard and spotter, shooting out a couple of security cameras as they go.

It doesn't take long for the first response to get to them; after they make short work of them, the next chamber causes a warning to buzz from one of Natasha's gadgets and they pause for a moment to stick on respirators. 

After they blow the door on the other side of that, there are a few more guys in the next couple of waves; nothing that Natasha can't handle, but Maria uses the time-honoured tactics of finding some cover or flattening against the wall and taking out a few of them with her pistol to speed things up, and calls out a few useful warnings.

The blast door between the escape tunnel and the main complex has been secured by the time they get to it, so there are a few moments while Natasha sticks explosive in the right spots for Maria to catch her breath.

"Attention intruders!" blares some kind of hidden sound system. "If you cease and desist your activities, we promise that no harm will come to you. If you decide to proceed, however, I can assure you that we have several hostages."

Maria looks around for the source of the voice, but Natasha gestures sharply at her; it might be useful to listen, it isn't doing them any favours, don't waste bullets.

"And maybe if you will not take our word for it, you'll take Captain America's."

"Whoever's out there," he begins, and in the roughness of his voice Maria can hear all the things she has been fearing; all the reasons that she persuaded Fury to let her go on this mission immediately, rather than waiting for Agent Barton to get back. 

She doesn't think it's possible that the enemy can make Captain America do anything or tell them anything particularly compromising, but she does think it's very likely they can accidentally kill him through neglect and stupidity.

"If you've come to rescue me; turn back. There are women and children here who have done nothing but accidentally eat at the same cafe as me. If you come any further, they will start killing them. If you leave, I sincerely believe that they will return them to their families when they are done with me."

She can hear him draw another breath, to carry on his speech, but she's heard enough. Maria takes aim at the first hidden speaker, and puts a bullet through it; then she spins and takes out the second, third and fourth backup speakers for good measure.

Natasha shakes her head minutely, the gesture only even visible to Maria through their long acquaintance, and finishes planting the explosives.

The noise of gunfire and crackling electricity and the occasional grunt of surprise or pain or terror from anyone too bull-headed to flee or surrender mostly drowns out the sound of his voice, which is quickly replaced as he changes tack. Maria mentally fills in "you might as well hurry" after the broadcast "No, it's too late now", carefully ignoring that it had instead cut off with a muted noise of terror, and easily tunes out the sound of children crying and the adults with them pleading.

As they get deeper into the complex, the fighting gets more desperate. Natasha is taking on three guys at once as Maria shoots a fourth that is attempting to jump down from a gantry on top of her; a surprisingly well-hidden shooter opens up and the few shots that connect knock Maria back into a wall, as she fires back a couple of much more accurate rounds.

Then suddenly there is a two-tone alarm broadcast that fills the air and resistance melts away like a mirage. The heavy blast panel has come down over the entrance to the detention block, but Natasha is already working on it. Maria leans against a wall and tries to keep her breathing under control; she doesn't think she's broken anything serious yet, but she's not sure she can guarantee that will continue if she starts coughing now.

They take a couple of steps back, and the blast door succombs to the carefully placed explosives.

Cautiously picking their way through the area, Natasha looks up, like she's heard something; a moment later Maria hears it too: he's done an excellent job of suppressing the rasp in his voice for the moment as he organises the survivors.

Momentarily ignoring her injuries, even though she knows that she will pay for it later, Maria breaks into a run.

She finds him looking out of a doorway, having heard running footsteps; the slow deliberation of his movements is obviously meant to be reassuring to whoever he is protecting, but it just serves to her to underline the total exhaustion she can see in his features.

"Agent Hill," he acknowledges. It's hard to read him through the iron control that it is obviously taking just to stand up straight, and to plaster on a professional and reassuring expression.

She runs through a variety of options in her mind, from a similarly formal "Captain" through a professional check of his current status, but eventually she goes for her first instinct; she pulls a fistful of ration bars and a canteen of water out of her pouches, trying not to wince as the ruined bullet-proof vest shifts against the bruises, and presents them to him. "Eat something," she insists.

"Yes ma'am," he replies, pretty much automatically, and there is a silent plea in his eyes. She nods almost imperceptibly, and then she steps over him into the room to take over the situation as he sits down heavily in the doorframe and begins to eat and drink very carefully, hands shaking with the effort of not immediately wolfing down the provisions.

Natasha stations herself just outside the door to look for trouble, while Maria continues the work inside. The children have been separated off and are under the care of the least hysterical adults; there is another room where a couple of people are taking care of the most confused and upset adults; and slightly further down, a few of the slightly broken but mostly together cases are ransacking the rooms for sheets and improvising body-bags and carrying boards for the dead.

After a few more minutes with no enemy contact, Maria sends Natasha off to get a proper retrieval team. She looks at Steve on the way past, but it's clear that his world has contracted to the food that he is gradually consuming and the ability to sit down and not be responsible for anything, so she decides not to disturb him until the cleanup team are in place; instead, she just wordlessly replenishes the ration supply in passing, having essentially packed most of her kit space with food for just this reason.

One of the pouches has a bullet hole in, and she feels slightly dizzy for a moment, but she resolutely stands tall and does another round of the ex-hostages. The duty to reassure everyone and maintain order until there is someone competent to hand over to keeps her on her feet.

An indeterminate length of time passes until her radio crackles to life with the call of approaching SHIELD units; until Natasha returns with two agents in tow and tells her crisply, "You're relieved."

Maria does not make a fuss about reporting for medical evaluation.

\----

"Have you tried talking to him?"

Maria doesn't have many confidants; in fact, until recently, the number was approximately zero. Obviously there was Sitwell, and Coulson, and Fury, but while she could talk to them about professional issues they weren't really the type to sit down and just have a chat. 

SHIELD would provide her with any number of highly qualified and thoroughly cleared therapists, but someone who was paid to listen to you just wasn't the same. And she was sure that, while many of them were good enough at their job not to show it, they were all a little intimidated by her.

Strictly, there was no way that she should be confiding in Pepper. As a civilian CEO, there was no way that she should have this kind of access to the mind of Agent Maria Hill. Given Pepper's proximity to the ongoing catastrophic information leak often referred to as Iron Man, however, Maria figured that there couldn't really be much harm in it.

"That's easy to say," replies Maria, "but how would I actually do that? I'm - essentially - his superior officer. If I ask him to have a quiet word, that's not going to set the tone correctly at all. I could ambush him outside of working hours, but I can see that going even less well."

"You want to think about that, then," smiles Pepper, "because if you don't get around to it soon, I will make Tony do something embarrassing and you'll wish that you'd dealt with it in a manner of your choosing."

Maria thinks for a second or two. There's a trace of irritation in the idea that she might be outplayed, but the more she thinks about it, the more it seems like the perfect solution.

"Actually, that might not be such a bad idea," she concludes. "It's going to be difficult enough anyway; things are always easier when there's someone else to blame."

"I'm sure you're not meant to just admit that to me," replies Pepper, amused. "Do you have any restaurants you've been wanting to try out, but can't make on a government salary? You might as well get something out of it..."

When heading to the target location, Maria keeps up a few precautions, but the fact that she carefully arranged the restaurant with Pepper in advance makes this fake mission brief incredibly easy to spot. It's meant to be the obligatory local medium-risk mission she goes on after getting injured to make sure any reluctance to go back into the field has been thoroughly shaken out. She thinks that's rather excessive this time anyway; a few bruised ribs has never slowed her down before.

She considers trying to act surprised when the maitre d' escorts her to a secluded table where Steve Rogers is already nervously paging through the menu, but she decides against it. No more levels of subterfuge and misdirection. It could only make things worse.

"Tony set this up, didn't he," says Steve in a rather resigned tone of voice, once the staff are all out of immediate earshot.

"Actually," Maria admits, "I set this up. Tony just thinks that he did."

Steve makes an obvious attempt not to look too confused. "Why?" he asks, closing the menu and putting it to one side.

"Because we need to talk," says Maria, "and I didn't want it to be formal, or in anyone's territory." She opens up her expression a little, letting her eyes look a little anxious, searching for approval.

"You think it's that bad?" he asks, also looking searchingly at her. "I mean, I know there are always... things between SHIELD and the Avengers, but..."

"This isn't..." begins Maria, and she smiles ruefully. "This isn't really... about the Avengers. Or about SHIELD."

His eyes narrow slightly; he looks slightly suspicious, wary, like he's walked into a trap and needs to carefully pick his way out of it. "Then, what is it about?" he asks, carefully.

Maria looks down at her untouched menu. She doesn't do this. She doesn't know how to do this. She'd had it in her mind, while she was setting this up, that this was just about what had happened under a mountain with some crazies; that she just wanted to make sure he didn't still blame her for carrying on with the rescue mission, even after he'd told her not to. But it wasn't just about that, was it?

"It's okay," he says, putting on his comforting voice, the one he uses for frightened civilians; the one he used, she suspects, on his soldiers. It's a good comforting voice; it reassures the listener that they must be safe, because Captain America is here for them.

It's really not what she wanted to hear right now.

"Ugh," she says. Honesty is the best policy, she reminds herself, in this kind of situation. She doesn't get that many chances to be honest and she doesn't need to screw up this one on top of everything. "I'm sorry. I don't... I don't do this."

"Do what?" he asks, and she can't help but feel that he is genuinely interested in the answer, in anything that she has to say, although he is now letting a slight trace of bewilderment through into his voice.

"Have... talks," she continues, trying to find the right words. "Admit that people..." she hesitates, but she knows it's too late now, "admit that people mean anything to me."

"Are you asking whether I'm mad at you?" he asks. "For... rescuing me?"

"That's what I thought I was asking, yes," Maria admits. "And I guess I'm still interested in the answer."

"No, then," he says. "I was acting..." he shakes his head. "On instinct. Stupidly. I actually listened when Fury talked to me afterwards. I know I can't... consider myself less valuable than other people, like that."

She nods, sympathetically, and is saved from finding the next thing to say for a moment by the arrival of a waiter.

"Are you ready to order, sirs?"

He looks at her for a moment, deferring to her lead, as she hasn't even touched her menu; with a touch of guilt, even, for making the conversation keep her from it.

"Certainly," replies Maria to the waiter. She never comes to a restaurant without having already read the menu, and in any case she has used this one for so many contacts that she knows the range that she commonly orders by heart. "The carbonara for me, and..." she smoothly hands over.

"...mixed grill with chipped potatoes," he continues. "And can we have a jug of water for the table?"

"Certainly, sir," the waiter echoes, and departs with the menus.

"No wine?" he asks, to keep the silence from stretching.

She can't let it go on like this. She knows how to talk to people. Right now? Break the tension.

"If you're already thinking about how to get me intoxicated," she says, flippantly, "it looks like this conversation might go better than I thought."

It doesn't quite have the effect she was after; he drops his gaze to the table in front of her, embarrassed.

"No, I..." he pauses a moment to collect his thoughts. "I just thought this was the kind of place you normally have wine with the meal," he explains. "I didn't mean to..."

"Stop apologising," she admonishes him, still friendly but letting a sliver of sternness creep back in.

"I'm sorry," he says, automatically, and then grins as he sees what she did there.

"That's better," she says.

"So," he says, briefly delaying what he obviously wants to say. "That was what you thought you were asking. So what are you asking?"

"I'm afraid I've got several pages of disclaimers to go through first," she warns him.

Since the menus went away, he has been fiddling with his napkin; now he stops that for a moment, and just rests his hands lightly on the table. Maria notes that they are carefully within reach, but also carefully not so far forwards that he is obviously making a statement.

"Can we just assume you went through them?" he says, trying to catch her gaze, which is trying to make up its mind between his hands and the middle distance.

She lets him make eye contact, and the feeling that she could just fall into his warm gaze forever is unexpectedly strong.

"Okay," she says, and she reaches out her hands to cover his. "But you do need to be warned, I'm lousy at this. Absolutely terrible."

"Then let's make it very clear," he replies, and she can tell that the confidence in his tone is overlayed, put there for her benefit over the strong conviction that he was just about to screw everything up that he had worked for since he woke up out of that ice. "I have - and I know it's hideously inappropriate, even though SHIELD is a little shaky on the whole chain of command thing - a serious crush on you, ma'am; and I think you return the favour; and I want to see what happens if we let ourselves take it further."

She almost can't keep looking at him. She almost can't stop herself just turning around and fleeing the restaurant and forgetting it ever happened; she knows that he won't hold it against her, that they will go back to having an ordinary and sensible working relationship. But she forces herself to maintain eye contact and let the stupid, genuine smile that she never lets anyone see - or no-one that matters, anyway - spread across her face.

"I..." she starts, but words are still hard. "I want that too," she settles on.

He lets out a breath that she hadn't noticed he was holding.

"Good," he says. He looks down at their hands, like he can't quite believe this is happening. "I'm pretty bad at this too, I think. I mean, you know. I'm sure it's all on file."

"What's on file," replies Maria, her smile staying comfortably in place, "is that you've done pretty well, given your background and upbringing, although you might have lost a couple in the beginning by moving too slow."

"Well," he says, looking up at her again, "let's not make the same mistake, huh?"


End file.
